Monday, November 9, 2015

Operations North of the James River: June - October 1864

What if I was to tell you that a series of desperate battles
was fought on the footsteps of the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia?

You’d most likely think that I was referring to the Seven Days Battles of 1862,
right?

Wrong.

Skip forward two years past the famed debut of Robert E. Lee
as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia and you will encounter a complex
series of battles and skirmishes fought within an hour’s march of the very
nerve center of the Confederate nation.

These lesser known battles saw, among other things:

Approximately 15,000 combined casualties

Four general officers killed or mortally wounded

The first twelve Medals of Honor issued to African American
infantrymen in U.S. history

Old Marse Robert’s final offensive actions before the last
three weeks of the war in Virginia

But Richmond was a hard road to travel, as the song went,
and even though the Union war machine would hurl entire armies at the city’s
gates in 1864, the despised bastion would not fall until that fateful April day
in 1865.

Henry Hardenbergh wins the MOH at 2nd Deep Bottom.

This series of battles would be fought east of Richmond and
north of the James River and would center around the road networks and
fortifications that ringed the eastern approaches to the city. The names
associated with these battles remain largely forgotten – places like Tilghman’s
Gate, Gravel Hill, Strawberry Plains, and Fussell’s Mill. Thanks to the efforts
of a growing group of Civil War scholars, other names like Deep Bottom, Fort
Harrison, New Market Heights, and Darbytown Road are becoming more familiar.

While the names of many of these battles are confused and
used interchangeably in the official records, the litany of major actions north
of the James breaks down as follows:

The First Battle of Deep Bottom: July 26-29, 1864

The Second Battle of Deep Bottom: August 14-20, 1864

The Battle of Chaffin’s Farm: September 29-30, 1864

The First Battle of Darbytown Road: October 7, 1864

The Second Battle of Darbytown Road: October 13, 1864

The Second Battle of Fair Oaks: October 27-28, 1864

In an upcoming series of posts, I plan to extract a few
noteworthy samplings from each of the abovementioned clashes rather than
attempt a detailed explanation of each individual fight. We will begin with the
events that led to the establishment of the Deep Bottom bridgehead in late June
of 1864 and then spend some time with the first battle that bore its name in
late July. We will survey each of the two major days of fighting and then look
at some of the more notable instances of heroism, including Sgt. Adam
Ballenger, who singlehandedly captured a Federal cannon and was promoted to the
rank of lieutenant for doing so.

For the Second Battle of Deep Bottom we will look at a dark
day for the officer corps of the Army of Northern Virginia: August 16, 1864.
That day would see the deaths of two generals – John R. Chambliss, Jr., a
brigade commander in J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry, and the flamboyant Victor Jean
Baptiste Girardey who had made a name for himself at the Battle of the Crater. We
will also examine the Battle of Fussell’s Mill, which saw the heaviest sustained
fighting of the Second Deep Bottom Campaign.

We will then shift our gaze to the experience of two white
Union officers who led African American soldiers during the Battle of Chaffin’s
Farm. Lt. John McMurray of the 6th USCT left a gripping account his
regiment’s fateful charge against New Market Heights Lt. John Viers of the 5th
USCT dodged death at the Battle of New Market Heights on the morning of
September 29, 1864 only to be captured later in the day during the horrific
assault on Fort Gilmer. As we will see, white USCT officers did not always have
the easiest time when they fell into the hands of the Rebel army.

Next we will look at the First Battle of Darbytown Road and
the death of another Confederate general, John Gregg. This Alabamian went from
serving in the Provisional Confederate Congress to fighting in the Western
Theater where, through a strange series of events, he found himself placed in
command of one of the most famed fighting units of the entire war – Hood’s
Texas Brigade.

The concluding post will pick up the story of the U.S.
Colored Troops in late October 1864, when a controversy broke out over the use
of black prisoners to construct new Confederate fortifications and the massacre
of black troops who had surrendered during the fighting on October 27th.

Along the way I will stop to give character portraits of
both individuals and units that saw action in this forgotten sector.

As we will see, there is much fresh and exciting material to
unpack from the fighting on this overlooked front of the American Civil War.

1 comment:

Glad to read that you will be writing about these operations. My great-grandfather served on the USS Mendota which was stationed on Four Mile Creek near Deep Bottom. The Mendota supported the Army actions in this area.

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About Me

Jimmy Price is a Museum Education Specialist with the National Museum of the United States Army. An Air Force veteran, he received his M.A. in Military History from Norwich University in 2009. His first book, The Battle of NewMarket Heights: Freedom Will Be Theirs by the Sword, was published in 2011. The Journal of Southern History claims “this slim volume offers considerable insight regarding the black military experience.” His second book, The Battle of First Deep Bottom was released to critical acclaim in 2014. Jimmy writes about different aspects of military history on his blogs Freedom by the Sword: A Historian’s Journey through the American Civil War Era andOver There: Blogging the AEF and WWI. He has contributed essays to A Companion to the Meuse-Argonne Campaign (edited by Edward G. Lengel), Hallowed Groundmagazine, and the International Encyclopedia of the First World War. He lives in Fredericksburg, Virginia with his wife and three children.